Our latest LinkedIn message and script ideas that will help you build connections on LinkedIn
LinkedIn is the most effective channel to market in the B2B world. Today it has more than 740 million people (2021 figures) and, according to CRM provider Hubspot, LinkedIn is 227% more effective at lead generation than Facebook or Twitter.
For this reason alone, every commercial person needs to be good at connecting to others on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social media platform yes, but what makes it special is it’s become the place businesspeople go to grow their personal business connections. That means, all your customer contacts are likely to be on it somewhere.
For recruitment, LinkedIn has a special role. It’s become the predominant recruiter tool, overshadowing previous industry platforms. That’s because LinkedIn has built specific tools for recruiters to use. In the staffing world, whether you are headhunting new talent, or looking to improve your profile, LinkedIn is a tool you will need to master.
In this article, you’re going to learn the tips of the trade on how to reach out on LinkedIn like a social media guru.
Your Profile
1. Invest time in your LinkedIn profile
Spend time to develop your personal profile
You should think of your LinkedIn profile as your online CV. But, your LinkedIn profile won’t develop overnight; It’s meant to portray your lifetime career story.
When you first get online with LinkedIn, you will have no storyline at all. That means, your first job is to develop your backstory. Think of it as ‘your story so far.’
Fortunately, LinkedIn is very good at suggesting the ‘essential’ building blocks of your online profile that you should complete. These must-have LinkedIn profile ingredients include:
- A short-form profile of yourself (that hopefully shows some of your personality!)
- Your education and professional qualifications
- The company you work for now, and those you’ve been employed by before
- Your interests and hobbies
- Things you’ve written, and the type of books and articles you read
- Recommendations from friends and colleagues
- Projects you’ve been working on
2. Choose your profile pic, don’t let it pick you
Profile picture tips
It’s not enough to grab the photo and banner image that’s nearest to hand and slap it on your profile page. You need to consider what your profile picture says about you.
Consider our useful top tips for LinkedIn profiles that sell
- Does your image represent the ‘real you’?
- Is the picture quality up to scratch? (Is it of a professional quality level, not blurry, not smudged, is the background overpowering your foreground shot?)
- Are you projecting a professional personality? (Does it suggest you are the sort of person your target audience would look to hire?)
You also should consider what your face is saying. Part of being a human is trying to ‘read’ people by their facial expressions. Humans can contort their faces into 21 different facial expressions such as: happy, sad, fearful, angry, surprised, disgusted, appalled, hatred, awe and ones you’ve never heard of before like happily disgusted and fearfully surprised. What does yours say?
Remember too that people buy products and services from people LIKE THEM. Yes, it’s great to show your personality, but it’s equally important that you respect your audience and their tastes if you want to win them over.
If you need to, pay for some professional photography to create the image that says what you want it to say. Over the course of your career, that relatively small outlay will prove to be worthwhile!
3. Invite your personal contacts
Dust off your little black book
While there are millions of people online, not everybody is. You can instantly build a reasonably large network by uploading your personal contact records into LinkedIn. The platform provides tools to make this a relatively simple task.
4. Think of your LinkedIn profile as a banner ad.
Why should somebody stop and read it?
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (A.I.D.A)
One of the best-known tips in the PR industry is to design your articles to comply with the A.I.D.A. principles outlined above so that they instantly grab (and keep) the attention of the reader as they drift past your profile in search of something interesting or fun to read. It never hurts to have eye-catching content that inspires your audience. How about adding in a favorite quote that you think will resonate with your connections?
5. Keep your project activity record up to date
Because it’s hard to remember what you did last year
LinkedIn works best when you bring your personality into your profile. That’s not something that happens overnight. One way to grow out your story is to maintain a record of the projects you’ve worked on. It really does help others to build up a picture of your work-life activities. I’m always recommending to my team that they remember to invest a little time every month to update their project activity on LinkedIn. That’s because, it’s very hard to think back to what you did last year, or the year before that.
6. Ask for recommendations
You will be amazed how generous people can be
One of the best ways to grow your credentials as a business professional is to build up a portfolio of recommendations. It never ceases to amaze me the generosity of others when it comes to offering recommendations. Asking for recommendations works best when you’ve just completed an activity and your colleagues, suppliers or customers are thrilled with the outcomes you’ve produced. Striking while the iron is hot makes asking for recommendations much less awkward. Fortunately, LinkedIn has a simple reach-out feature that makes it easy to send a request to one of your contacts inviting them to write a recommendation.
7. Share your reading list
People want to get to know the things that you are interested in. One great way to do that is to share your reading list. It not only says something about the topics you find interesting but the people and personalities whom you look up to.
8. Publish something!
Get into writing
While sharing other content on your topic of choice may be interesting to some of your audience, there’s no better way to stamp your own personality on a subject than picking up your virtual pen and writing a post yourself. Why not produce three of four posts that cover your subject in a reasonable level of detail? Do it right and this will hopefully build up to tell a bit of a story about your personal experiences on the subject(s) you care about. At the very least, it will give you something to share with your online connections to get their feedback on… and, you never know, you might even find it rewarding!
LinkedIn Sales Tips
9. Keep inmails and connection requests brief
Winning useful connections on LinkedIn is about ‘catchy, catchy, slowly monkey’ small steps and not trying to do everything in the first message.
The general running order is:
- Outreach Connection
- Round One – ACKNOWLEDGEMENT / THANK YOU / INTRODUCTION
- Round Two – PROBLEM / SOLUTION VALUE
- Round Three – CREDENTIALS / USEFULNESS VALUE
Outreach Connection
This should be EXTREMELY short, ideally adding in some personality and a link to what the individual has posted, something they’ve done in the past, somewhere they’ve worked, a common interest you have, a shared connection…
Round One
The objective of the exercise here is to simply ‘acknowledge’ the individual has chosen to connect with you.
Round Two
This is the message that needs to do most of the heavy lifting. It needs to ‘put you in a box’ and explain to the recipient what you do and why you’re interesting to them focusing on the problem you solve.
Round Three
If round two doesn’t work, you have one last throw of the dice. This time, you’re going to evidence your credentials and demonstrate why you are a good contact for them to have.
If that doesn’t work, leave the contact alone — at least for a few weeks – and then go back with something interesting and new to say.
Conversational Workflow
OUTREACH INVITE
Short Style
Hi [name]
I see we share a common interest in [topic].
{any history or connections you have?}
Can we connect?
Best, [yourname]
Long Style
Hi [name]
I read your post on [topic]. Really interesting. Can we connect?
My profile will give you an idea of what I do.
I very much look forward to reading your posts in future.
My best regards,
[yourname]
ROUND 1 – ACKNOWLEGEMENT
Short Style
Hi [name]
Thanks for connecting. I look forward to reading your posts. How are things going?
If you checked out my profile, you’ll see I work with [industrytype] firms like yours. Interested to know how you {differentiate your customer offer.}
Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss your [topic] anytime, [yourname]
Long Style
Hi [name] and thank you for approving my connection request. I’m sure you get plenty, I suspect you don’t approve them all.
I want to find out more about your organization other than what I can glean from your website and LinkedIn. In fact, I’m attaching a link to {my latest blog that talks about ….}
If you want to discuss this over the phone, I’ll gladly make time to talk to you. Just tell me your most convenient window and we can setup a call.
Warmest regards,
[yourname]
ROUND 2 – PROBLEM/SOLUTION FIX
Short Style
Hi [name]
I know how difficult it is proving this year to [fill vacancies]. I have [some candidates on my books] that might well fit your short-term needs.
Any chance we could get on a call to discuss your plans?
Best,
[yourname]
ROUND 3 – CAPABILITY
Long Style
Did you get a chance to check out our website [link]?
You may have spotted [that we’re one of the fastest-growing NY headquartered agencies, with over 12 Fortune 500 brands and a client retention rate of 97%, testament I think to the commitment of our team toward white-glove customer service and quality].
Do you think working with a [fully vetted ISO9001 onshore/offshore recruitment team] is something your company would be interested in exploring?
Best,
[yourname]
10. Invest personal time into checking LinkedIn for the latest developments
Maintaining your presence
Building up your online profile on LinkedIn is not a five-minute fix. If you want to maximise your investment into LinkedIn, you will need to make it a habit to check up on activity every working day and consider updating your profile every month as a bare minimum. Consider following some of the recommended ‘interesting people’ to follow your interests. Additionally, it’s well worthwhile checking out the LinkedIn Groups related to your topic to grow your subject-matter connections and knowledge.
A small amount of time invested in socially networking on LinkedIn can connect you with your work-life community today, tomorrow, and for the rest of your career.